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John Freeland is leaving his position as president of worldwide operations at Salesforce.com to take the top spot at Information Resources, a Chicago-based company that provides marketing, sales, logistics and distribution of consumer goods in the United States, Europe and Latin America.
Freeland, whose resignation from San Francisco-based Salesforce.com was announced Sept. 28, joins IRI as the companys president and CEO. Prior to his two-year stint at Salesforce.com, Freeland was Accentures global managing partner, leading its CRM (customer relationship management) practice. While at Accenture, Freeland was instrumental in leading the system integrators embrace of Salesforce.coms on-demand model, a move that led a number of enterprise companies to consider and adopt Salesforce.coms technology.
Click here to read about Salesforce.coms new directions, including a change of name for its development platform, now called Force.com.
Once he jumped ship to Salesforce.com in 2005, Freeland became one of three presidents at the company. He was responsible for the companys Successforce portfolio as well as developing development and alliances. The other two presidents, Jim Steele and Frank van Veenendaal, head worldwide sales and distribution, and worldwide corporate sales and services, respectively.
Freelands departure is not the first high-profile exit from Salesforce.com. In 2006, the companys chief financial officer, Steve Cakebread, announced he would retire. Two months later he rescinded his retirement plan, but later said he would take on the role of president and chief strategy officer early in 2008, after he trains his CFO replacement.
Its not clear where Cakebreads role would have fit in with Freelands—whether it was intended to be a replacement or a fourth addition to the presidential ranks at Salesforce.
Earlier in 2007, another highly touted hire, Rene Bonvanie, left his job as AppExchange general manager after only four months on the job.
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